Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

On 18/06/2010 3:31 AM, K Randolph wrote:
> Randall and James:
>
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:16 AM, Randall Buth<randallbuth AT gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>    
> > When interpreting the MT, it is always good to remember that
> > the masoretes knew Hebrew.
> >
> >      
> That’s not the question. The question is how well did they know Biblical
> Hebrew?
>
> First of all, the Masoretes were human and their pointing a human
> development. As that popular modern paraphrase of Romans 3:23a states, “To
> err is human”, therefore we cannot assume that their points are without
> error.
> b-hebrew
>    
But surely the original writer, and every copier and/or editor from then 
until now, also was human?  Does that mean we must give up on the Hebrew 
(and obviously Greek as well) Scriptures because they were written by 
humans, and therefore in the end, to every question, all we can say is 
that we don't really know?  I may be misreading your posts over the 
years, but it seems as if you want to remove all tools for helping us to 
understand the Hebrew Scriptures - later Hebrew, cognate languages, 
tradition, much of history, linguistics, etc - and leave us with just 
the bare text.  But if we take your proverb "to err is human" seriously, 
can we even trust that?

Kevin Riley